SSS-Tier Extraction: From Outcast to Overgod!-Chapter 57: Ten Minutes of Chaos

Ryan stood his ground by the console, a silent sentinel in the heart of the Labyrinth. The dramatic defeat of Viktor "Ironjaw" had given the other factions a serious reality check.

This wasn’t just a fight against a high-level player anymore. This was a fight against a player who had the home-field advantage on a cosmic scale.

The floor could vanish, turrets could appear, and their own weapons could mysteriously run out of juice. Their confidence was shaken.

But they hadn’t given up. The prize of Sector Governorship was too great. After a brief, tense standoff, Tom Kane and Zara Khan, the leaders of the two remaining organized factions, realized that a direct, brute-force assault was a fool’s errand. They had to get smarter.

"He’s tied to that console!" Zara’s voice cut through the chamber, her words directed at her own troops but loud enough for everyone to hear. "He has to maintain the link! If we can disrupt it, his control over the room will fail! Hacker drones, deploy! Target his connection!"

From the ranks of the Circuit Breakers, a half-dozen small, sleek drones, looking like metallic hornets, zipped into the air. They were fast and nimble, their single blue sensor eyes glowing as they swarmed towards Ryan’s position.

They weren’t armed with weapons; they were armed with data spikes and interference emitters, designed to wage a war of information.

At the same time, Tom Kane was issuing his own, quieter commands to the Crimson Banner. He had seen Ryan use the Labyrinth’s own systems against them.

His S-Tier "Strategic Mimicry" was working overtime, no longer just analyzing Ryan, but analyzing the Labyrinth itself. He was trying to find a pattern, a rhythm to the Labyrinth’s security protocols.

If he could mimic those patterns, he might be able to confuse the Weaver’s defenses, tricking them into seeing his soldiers as "authorized personnel" instead of intruders. It was a brilliant, if incredibly difficult, strategy.

The Core Chamber, which had been a straightforward battlefield, transformed into a multi-layered chessboard of chaos. freёwebnoѵel.com

The countdown timer ticked on, relentless. 8 minutes remaining.

Zara’s hacker drones were the first to reach him. They buzzed around his bubble of calm, firing beams of corrupted data at the console.

Ryan felt their interference as a jarring, static-like sensation in his connection to the Weaver. It was like trying to have a conversation with someone while a dozen people were screaming in his ear.

"Oh, no you don’t," Ryan muttered. He didn’t have any anti-drone weaponry. But he had the room. He tapped a command into the console. High above, several large ventilation panels in the ceiling slid open.

A powerful, localized gravitational field activated. The air around the drones suddenly became as heavy as lead. Their tiny engines whined in protest, struggling against the immense, invisible pressure.

One by one, they were dragged from the sky, crashing to the stone floor with pathetic, metallic clinks. Zara’s high-tech assault was defeated by turning on the air conditioning.

[ 7 minutes remaining.]

Tom Kane’s strategy started to take effect. Two of his Crimson Banner soldiers, moving in a strange, syncopated rhythm, managed to advance without triggering the floor panels or any other obvious traps.

Kane had found a loophole, a blind spot in the Weaver’s security. They were getting closer.

Ryan couldn’t keep hitting floor panels over and over. He needed a more permanent solution. He fed another command into the Weaver.

This time, he didn’t alter the room itself. He altered the energy within it. He focused on the glowing blue conduits running along the walls near the Crimson Banner’s position. With a mental push, he caused the power flowing through them to surge.

The conduits began to leak raw, harmless but very visible energy, creating shimmering, hazy walls of light that blocked sightlines and created false readings on enemy sensors.

He was creating a hall of mirrors made of pure energy, turning the battlefield into a confusing, unpredictable mess. Kane’s soldiers, who relied on clear communication and line-of-sight, were suddenly bogged down, unsure of where their allies or their enemies were.

[ 5 minutes remaining.]

The battle had reached a stalemate. Ryan was a master defensive player, countering every move his opponents made. But he was tied to the console, unable to go on the offensive. Kane and Zara were brilliant strategists, constantly probing for new weaknesses, refusing to give up.

They were wearing him down, forcing him to constantly divide his attention between their different attacks.

While the main drama unfolded in the Core Chamber, a smaller, but no less important, series of battles was happening in the Labyrinth’s outer core.

Scarlett, Emma, and Jennifer, leading their teams of Blue Falcons, had finally pushed deep enough to encounter the reinforcements from the other Outposts. They weren’t fighting for control of the Weaver; they were fighting a desperate delaying action.

Scarlett, now a true master of aerial combat with her Sky Lord’s Mantle, became a nightmare for the Crimson Banner’s support squads, swooping down from the high ceilings of the Labyrinth to pick off targets before vanishing back into the darkness.

Emma used her "Tactical Insight" to lead the Iron Wolves’ stragglers into dead-end corridors and pre-existing Labyrinth traps, outsmarting them at every turn.

Jennifer used her "Tremor Sense" to cause controlled cave-ins, blocking key passageways and preventing the Circuit Breaker’s heavy equipment from reaching the Core. They were buying Ryan precious time, holding back the tide with sheer grit and courage.

Their heroic efforts were broadcast on the Sector CommNet, which the god Warden had temporarily opened up for all ten Outposts to view the historic event. Neutral Outposts, who had initially been content to just watch, started to take sides.

[Player | Outpost #6 | Star Vipers]: "Look at those Blue Falcons go! They’re holding off three factions at once!"

[Player | Outpost #9 | Terra Nova]: "I’m impressed. Ryan Stone is a beast, and his team is just as tough. I’m rooting for #7."

Some offered tentative support, sending messages of encouragement. Others, seeing the established power of the other factions, declared their allegiance to Kane or Zara, hoping to get in on the ground floor of a new regime.

The political landscape of Sector Gamma was being redrawn in real-time, based on the outcome of this single, chaotic battle.

[ 1 minute remaining.]

The countdown was almost at its end. Tom Kane and Zara Khan knew it was now or never. They looked at each other from across the chamber. No words were needed. Their rivalry was set aside for one final, desperate push. They had to work together.

"All units!" Kane’s voice rang out. "Combined assault! Target the user directly! Overwhelm him!"

"Focus all remaining power on a single, coordinated strike!" Zara commanded her troops. "Ignore the environmental hazards! Push through!"

The truce was official. The tattered remnants of the Crimson Banner, and the Circuit Breakers rallied for one last, desperate, all-or-nothing charge.

They ignored the energy barriers, they ignored the threat of traps. They surged forward as one, a single, massive wave of desperation aimed directly at Ryan and the console. This was the final push. The last sixty seconds would decide the fate of the entire Sector.

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